It often appears to me that we have a cavernous hunger within our psyche. An insatiable appetite for knowing that rumbles through our blood and bones. An often bittersweet reverence of predictability. One that manifests itself in innocuous practicalities that make contemporary life, many would argue, better! Yet amidst our intricate maps, our technology, systems and methods ...I am often encumbered by a thought. The thought that men and women may well forge forward to understand the intricacies of stars and planets, even inhabit them, without having journeyed inward with purpose. Inward into that murky landscape some call the soul. The palette of artists, authors, musicians and the timeless pedestal of seers, prophets and philosophers. That map-less terrain upon which no house can ever be built . For its soil is teeming with life that is felt but never seen. A life that cracks through the naive predictability of all the foundations we attempt to lay upon its surface.
Ah...how I have detested these spaces within! Its taunting mixtures of fear and memory. Its unending questions, its grip upon all corners of time; the past, present and future all confused within its unending universe. The burden of thought with each plunge for answers, like sifting through the Sahara with a spoon! An endeavor that left my hopes parched, desires unfulfilled and me, alone in the eviscerating heat of an impossible escape.
Escape...for it was in the chaos of struggle that I was plunged into these depths I now refer to as soil. Yet in truth, it possessed no label, it was a place of suffering in my eyes, an abstraction in the depths of my mind from which I sought refuge. Refuge earned in desperate doses , albeit in brief moments of fantasy, of gratitude and service to others. A surface smile and sarcastic charm that veiled the intensity of suffering beneath. For that murky undertow, in all its depravity, could not be accepted. It needed to be suppressed, if at all possible, forgotten, as if it were some torrid imagining. For above it all was where life was worthwhile, even if it were a spectacle tasked with distraction. It was a life one could speak of , one which could be rationalised and planned for.
Alas... if you have attempted this with great earnest, you must feel the weight of the air beneath my sigh when I say that it is an exercise in futility. For I walked countless roads, with both feet and mind, only to return to the incessant beat of my core. That pounding within, like Poe's Tell-Tale Heart, unyielding in its seek of my sincere attention. Laughing at my meager armoury, my fondness of distress, all too aware of my tenderness.
Oh how weary I grew! Spent and ashamedly confused. Believe me... I do not lay claim to any convenient wisdom or badges of courage in saying any of this. For in entering this world, we are bereft of choice and as such, living is an act of courage that we all partake in. If at all, the intensity of weariness rendered me momentarily blind. Blind to pictures painted, roles cast and stories told. Fatigue tore open a void within which I could eventually summon the strength to see anew.
For in the depths of my weariness, questions simmered in the darkness. Centered on the utility of this murky core I endured visits to. "Surely there must be a purpose to it beyond suffering? These cycles of remembrance, these self deprecating projections ...do they serve any purpose?" This line of thought, in the winding canals of my day dreams, were incisive.They opened me to the possibility of extracting some use from the smoke within. Smoke from fires started long ago. And this is how I came to call my core...my soil. For utility implies the potential of growth and for any of consequence to grow...there must be fertile soil.
Could it not be that we are akin to seedlings, tunneling through an ambiguous earth in seek of sustenance? A journey in which our roots persistently swim through the damp earth of our experiences, tasked with the purpose of growth. Our leaves and branches in a vibrant dance to the songs of the sun, until the moon invites us to dream. A gorgeous symbiosis. For what is one without the other? Does a tree with shallow roots not risk the felling of its ambitions by the winds of circumstance? Does a system of roots, so attuned to the underground, not languish and lose heart without the joy of the sun? Without the sweet longing of its flowers and fruits to be of use to this world? Oh does this thought not shake to the foundations our infantile tales of light and dark? Does this not at the very least prompt us to consider how little we value struggle, our supposed demons, our darkness in the depths of our minds. Does it not ask us, in spite (and moreover because) of our fears, to dig deeper into our beings as opposed to building towers atop false foundations?
Oh brothers and sisters, forgive any pretense contained herein. In this rambling cerebral alchemy. For it is with unending sincerity that I share the truth of my realizations. I have long seen within, a hideous being, barely fit to persist. A swirl of smokey images that lingered all the more when I sought to escape them. Is it only when I chose to borrow deeper that I could see their fires of origin, the innocence of the starter. When doused with loving temperance, oh the lessons, the fertility contained in the ash! Oh the relief, the surge of power that flows through your being when these words swim within you....
" From all that has come to pass...how will I to grow?"